31 July 2004	Saturday	13 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

ISLAMABAD, July 30: The developed countries have given a lukewarm response to the major concerns of the poor countries in second draft of the General Council of WTO, issued here on Friday.

"The second draft issued this morning in Geneva is once again a mock epic with the developing countries," said the Sustainable Agriculture Action Group (Saag) in a statement. The first draft, which was released on July 16, to bring the WTO negotiations back on track, met great deal of opposition by the delegations of developing countries in Geneva.

The new draft did not accommodate the serious concerns of developing countries. The developed countries kept on pressurising the developing countries to accept the draft on the one hand and were inflexible, when it came to make any change in the document.

The developing countries were given only a few hours to give their input on the framework, which covered issues of great importance for them. "This is how WTO and the alliance of rich countries play with the destiny of poor countries," the Saag statement said.

Saag criticized the WTO chair of General Council, Mr Oshima, who was not ready to incorporate any change in the draft released this morning. He was simply making the scripture of the draft, which was nothing but a recipe of poverty for the developing countries.

The framework was biased regarding geographical indications and cotton, which was the concern of millions of people in the world because of EU protection and US subsidies, respectively.

The document discuss the issue to be taken up by the international financial institutions rather than having the reduction in the subsidies. This is another tool that the rich countries are using to control cotton.

The developing countries have been opposing the 'blue box' subsidies, which seem to be designated for EU and the US. Unfortunately, the new draft contains almost the same, while giving deaf ear to poor countries' demands.

Similarly, in the area of market access, the new draft gives great importance to the so called sensitive products that was another tool of protectionism for developed countries to safeguard their markets. This did not provide any protection to poor countries.

The poor countries including G-90 have long been demanding that the Non-Agriculture Market Access (Nama) should not be based on the same text as that of Cancun, which derailed the negotiations there. But the General Council did not bring the issue into consideration and Nama is now contentious issue in WTO as the movement, the Saag statement concluded.